Poetry makes the point
One of my great sadnesses is that staff in the NHS and elsewhere fail to understand the immense suffering caused by wrongful suspension, whether it be for a mistake, whistleblowing or false allegations from a jealous colleague.
Becoming mentally ill is the norm, since people are unable to think clearly or sleep, and appetite disappears - all ingredients for physical and mental illness. The body just can’t take the strain especially as the victim is usually a person of integrity with high personal standards and a great love for their job.
I wrote an article for the Health Service Journal some years ago and the HSJ commissioned a cartoon. The artist showed a huge liner leaving a distressed NHS employee stranded on a tiny island while it sailed into the sunset. Brilliant. It probably helped with my dismissal, a small but painful price to pay?
More recently, a sufferer of injustice has been putting pen to paper and conveying something of the powerlessness of the victim and the unaccountability of the well paid perpetrators. Read on….
Whistle and they’ll come for you…
I’m the last of the radical nurses
I’ve got Bevan tattooed on my bum
and I believe that the sickest of patients
get the least care and that’s wrong.
I don’t like this tick-box culture
nor doing the care on the cheap
and I don’t think the family silver
should go to a great private heap
I think that the management tiers
pay themselves what I consider excess
as they preside over a system that’s failing
and ensure staff are blamed in the press.
I’ve watched all my NHS heroes
Graham Pink, David Drew….Rita Pal
speak out for what they believe in
to get thoroughly trounced
and I howl!
I’ve gone up the management ladder
to raise my concerns time by time…
So these poems are my very last option
to whistle blow here in bold rhyme.
Written warning
A word of wisdom in your ear…
‘You care too much!’ they said
Our job is ticking boxes
We are audit culture lead.
So take your fine ideas
You can protest in your head
Our job is ticking boxes
Initiative is dead.
Part of the union
When we asked for some support from the union,
we were bowled over when we were told
You must do as your managers tell you
And you’ll keep a job ‘til you’re old.
If they don’t want you to talk to the doctors
or log on their computers… OK.
It’s only about vulnerable patients
So not the management plan to this day.
and finally with thanks to the author who for obvious reasons has to remain anonymous….
Speaking up
If you are a doctor
they damn your career to hell.
And if you are a nurse
they discipline you if you tell.
But if you’re at the very bottom
the kicks and cuts are tough
from your erstwhile colleagues
when you are beaten up.
The suits who take the salaries
they really don’t want to know
as their next promotion
is where they are keen to go.
So don’t speak up for the patients
The vulnerable and the old
‘Cos when you work in healthcare
You should just do as you’re told.
Again my sincere thanks to the author of these verses. They capture so much, so well. I hope they get a wide readership.
And judging by the steady numbers of staff still contacting the www.suspension-nhs.org team, nothing has changed. Dire for us all, in every capacity.
Julie
